(9) Flirting At The Library
Andrew arrived at the appointed hour; Lara was, more or less, ready. Here I am, she announced, ready for action!
Do we need to go over any last minute changes in game plan?
Nope, just accompany me inside and maybe go sit at the picture window and embroil yourself in magazines.
And that’s what they did. Parked, entered, parted. Lara was attracted to the new bookshelf and was browsing quite contentedly in minutes. Andrew sat with an issue of the New Yorker and stared out onto the small plaza and the street beyond. He was lost in recalling his recent parallel park and his sudden and not-so-peculiar notion that they were indeed parking the zeitgeist and just walking. Their game plan was the zeitgeist. What, really, could be more the spirit of the age? After all his pondering, way back whenever, here he was, up to his neck in it.
There was an opinion piece about Sarah Palin that oppressed him with its relevance. He cruised the About Town listings instead. New York, now there was a place to revel in the arts! He recalled his bus driver days, thinking about going and never doing it. Going to London and St.Andrews instead. Oh my god, Wayne Shorter at the Village Vanguard. Kevin Kline off Broadway. Joffre Ballet. Ry Cooder. Bill Frisell. He was getting bilious. He flipped to David Denby’s movie reviews. A major studio release that should have been better. Big stars, hot director, but script, unfortunately, by committee. An independent with promise. Some kind of Sundance offshoot. Did well at TIFF last time. A surreal riff on trans-gendered aliens? No, please.
A humour piece by Steve Martin. About banjo sitar duets. In a New Jersey rec room. With a guy who’d like to be VM Bhatt but had some ways to go. He thought about Martin’s film Shopgirl. He’d enjoyed that. Witty, stylish, fun. He looked up. Lara was seating herself on a couch nearby, with a youngish Muslim looking man that he just knew was the guy from the dream. He refused the temptation of the raised fist and the Yes! as somehow inappropriate. He burrowed back in to his New Yorker. Almost too easy, too good to be true. Maybe it was the wrong guy. He could hear Lara murmuring and it sounded sobstory-ish, but almost immediately another couple sat next to him and began to exchange comments, drowning out what little he could hear.
Maybe it was time to read about starlets and their love lives. He stood to swap his New Yorker for a Vanity Fair he’d noticed. Lara and her new friend stood and made their way out. He figured they’d appear somewhere in the window which had an almost 180 degree sweep. They did, walking towards the Second Cup it looked like. Okay, what now? His part was over. Lara had said if she made contact just to leave her. Whatever went down she could easily walk home. He tried amuse himself in the glossy depths of Vanity Fair, but somehow couldn’t seem to make the stretch. He was Mr. Loose End suddenly. Why not stroll to Starbucks for a latte? He always enjoyed that main street stretch. Yes, that was it, while the mainstage action unfolded elsewhere, he’d sit out the excitement sipping java and pondering the weighty issues of the day.
And since none of his new best friends were in residence he was able to do just that. The Irish were gonna take the big cash after all. No surprise there. NATO were now projecting 2014 for Afganistan withdrawal. A surprise if they stuck to it. Eight shootings in the city over the weekend. Hydro rates to be cut. A twenty year old wiretap scandal erupts again, with top cops dangerously close to the action. He moved slowly through the accumulating details, sensing the fire beneath the smoke. But it was a two-parter, he’d have to wait a few days for the denouement, which certainly looked juicy.
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